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Dia de Los Dangerous!
Dia de Los Dangerous! is the first episode in the first season of The Venture Bros. Storyline As the episode begins, Brock Samson is playing poker with a menacing group of Spanish-speaking men (some of whom wear luchador masks). Brock has a good hand of cards, but the ringleader smugly announces that he makes the rules in Tijuana and demands that Samson remove his last article of clothing, his underwear. After disrobing (which earns appreciative applause from at least one of the men), he uses his discarded clothing as weapons and mercilessly beats the men. Their ringleader, finally switching to perfect English, tells Brock that he will give him the car part he wanted if he stops the attack. Satisfied, Brock dresses again and casually saunters away from the devastation. Dr. Venture is appearing as a guest lecturer at the Community University of Mexico, although his audience consists only of a few bored students. He states that the myth of the chupacabra can be scientifically disproven, but most of the listeners leave when they discover that they are in the wrong classroom. Venture concludes his presentation and finds that the low turnout may be due to the fact that today is Día de los Muertos. Brushing off the apology, he asks for his honorarium, but is disappointed to find that it is in pesos. Stepping outside, Venture finds that even his bodyguard Brock is indifferent to his speech. As Samson leaves with a young Mexican woman, Venture is approached by Hank and Dean, his annoyingly perky twin sons, who enthusiastically point out the sombreros and sugar skulls they have acquired. A seemingly innocuous Monarch butterfly that settles on Venture's shoulder is actually a tiny robotic spy drone for The Monarch, the super-scientist's self-avowed enemy. The villain complains to Dr. Girlfriend, his second-in-command and romantic interest, that his nemesis must have followed him to Mexico in hopes of foiling his latest plan. Promising that there will be no punishment, The Monarch asks his henchmen to tell him who has leaked the information. When one henchman quietly clears his throat, the supervillain shoots him in the forehead with a wrist-launched dart. Momentarily calmed, The Monarch orders a young henchman-cadet named "Speedy" to lead a group in observing Dr. Venture. Eager to earn his wings, Speedy is further delighted to be entrusted with the keys to "the Monarch-mobile." Crushing the "butterfly" in disgust, Venture gives his sons some money and asks them to buy fireworks (or anything else to get them away from him). As they depart, he sets off on his actual goal of acquiring questionable prescriptions. The doctor he finds is reluctant despite his rundown office, and Venture offers him $100 American as a bribe. On their own for the day, Hank and Dean decide to "do something nice for H.E.L.P.eR." and take the robot to a car-painting garage. Speedy, impatient to prove himself to his boss, urges his fellow henchmen to capture the teens. They knock out Hank and Dean with darts, but Brock emerges from a nearby building (zipping his pants) in time to see them loading the unconscious teens into the Monarch-mobile. The panicked henchmen shoot the enraged, charging bodyguard with dozens of tranquilizers, but they seem to have no effect on him. He grabs the closest henchman, who happens to be Speedy, and begins strangling him one-handedly. In desperation, the Monarch-mobile's driver throws the vehicle into reverse and slams into the enraged Samson, finally knocking him down. Brock has maintained his iron grip around Speedy's throat, however; when his fellow henchmen are unable to free him, they shoot Speedy as a mercy killing. Back in the cocoon lair, The Monarch is initially furious that his henchmen defied his orders. His anger turns to delight when they inform him that although it cost Speedy his life, Brock Samson is now dead. Without Dr. Venture's "Swedish murder machine" to worry about, The Monarch can demand anything he wants from Venture using his sons as hostages. He takes one of the boys' satellite-linked communicator watches and attempts to contact his foe. When Venture does not answer, The Monarch records a message. After dreaming of a bearded fetus eating another, Venture wakes up in a bathtub full of ice with a note taped to his chest and bandages around his midsection. The note tells him that he should seek immediate medical attention, and he discovers that one of his kidneys has been stolen. Upon reflection, Venture checks the scar of a matching incision on the opposite side of his body and realizes that this is the second kidney he has lost to theft, leaving him without kidneys entirely. When Brock fails to answer his communicator watch, Venture summons H.E.L.P.eR. instead, who now has a number of automotive decorations including flames painted around its eyes and a horn that plays "La Cucaracha." The doctor clambers onto the robot's back and tells it to take him to the X-1. The boys awake to find themselves imprisoned in The Monarch's cocoon headquarters. Much to the villain's dismay, the Ventures confess that their father pays little attention to his schemes. Venture's real archenemy, they speculate, is probably Baron Ünderbheit. Smoldering with rage, The Monarch storms away from the cell. On board the family jet, the doctor modifies H.E.L.P.eR. to filter his blood, serving as an artificial kidney. When Venture attempts to locate Brock again, he notices the dozens of messages The Monarch has left describing his abduction of Hank and Dean. The supervillain questions Hank and Dean again over methods of contacting their father. The boys, a bit saddened that they have not been rescued, indicate that their watches are the only way they know. The Monarch is obviously struck with sympathy for the boys and attempts to make them feel better. Using the signal from Brock's watch as a beacon, H.E.L.P.eR. carries Venture through the Mexican desert. The doctor is horrified to find that the indicator leads directly to a shallow grave marked only with Brock's combat knife. Lying in bed (but still in full costume), The Monarch displays clear signs of agitation. Dr. Girlfriend, reading beside him in a negligee, asks him to talk to her. At first he vents his frustration over Venture's seeming indifference towards his sons, but Girlfriend senses something deeper and asks about The Monarch's own parents. The anguished villain finally tells her about the plane crash in New Jersey that killed his parents, leaving him alive but alone as an eight-year-old. He became enchanted by the Monarch butterflies in the area and began imitating them, creating makeshift wings and eating milkweed. One day, he awoke to find his "adoptive family" gone. He later learned that they migrate to Mexico each year and confesses that his current "scheme" is a sham excuse to search for what he considers his foster parents. Dr. Girlfriend gently tells him that Monarch butterflies have only a nine-month lifespan, which shocks him, but she urges him to try to be a father to Dean and Hank. Sobbing over the loss of his bodyguard, Venture guzzles tequila and builds a meager shrine over the grave. As he babbles drunkenly, Brock emerges from the ground still clutching poor Speedy's corpse. The shocked but still inebriated Venture assumes that his shrine brought Samson back to life, but he was merely unconscious. Brock chugs the rest of the tequila and demands to know where the boys are. Hank unsuccessfully tries to pick the cell's lock with his belt buckle. In a manically cheerful mood, The Monarch offers them fresh-baked cookies; the intrepid boys pounce on him, attempting to overpower him and escape. Still playing the role of doting father, The Monarch laughingly interprets the feeble attack as good-natured horseplay. As Brock and Venture near the cocoon in the X-1, Brock disconnects Venture from his robotic kidney so that H.E.L.P.eR. can continue to pilot the jet. He hustles Venture towards the rear of the plane, where his Dodge Charger is stowed. A chupacabra leaps from the shadows in the car, inflicting several superficial slashes across Venture's face, but Brock coolly pins the creature with his knife. He loads the shaken doctor into his car and opens the cargo bay door. Before Venture can object, he backs the car out of the jet in mid-air, briefly deploying a parachute. He releases the parachute and the car plummets towards The Monarch's lair. The Monarch is still wrestling with the boys when Brock's Charger crashes through the ceiling. Brock orders Venture to get out and take care of the boys; he is still enraged that the henchmen hit him with a truck. He exacts his revenge by running over dozens of them, using the wipers to scrape the blood from the Dodge's windshield. The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend flee in an escape pod as Brock continues to slaughter his goons. Venture lethargically shuffles towards the boys, who render a joyous Team Venture salute. Back on board the X-1, Venture explains to his sons that he will need a kidney transplant from one of them. The boys play rock, paper, scissors to decide who the donor will be, but they wake up to find that Venture has taken one from each of them; as it turns out, they tied with "rock." Quotes *'Hank:' This place is tits! *'Dr. Venture:' (receiving a Mexican check) How very generous of... oh, great, pesos. All these zeros are meaningless. *'Dr. Venture': So, how do you say 'doctor' in Mexican? Dr. Gueverra: Doctor. *'Hank:' Well, sure. H.E.L.P. eR. looks like a dried-out turd on a bad stretch of road. *'Dr. Guevara:' I realize I am a Tijuana doctor, but even we have scruples. I could lose my license to practice... Mexican medicine. *'Hank:' What's your problem with our dad anyway?! The Monarch: (awkwardly) Well, I- he- he's my nemesis. My archenemy. Dean: I don't think pop thinks you're his archenemy. The Monarch: Come on, I'm sure the walls of the Venture Compound are practically caked with the lingering curses of the Monarch's name. Dean: Uhh, no. I've never even heard him mention you. Hank: Yeah, I always thought Baron Ünderbhiet was dad's arch-enemy. The Monarch: (astounded) Ünderbhiet!?! Why, that dime store Doctor Doom isn't fit to -- just you wait til your father calls me back!! *'Hank and Dean:' Dad! Dean: We knew you wouldn't let us down. Hank: And just in the nick of time too -- Monarch was gettin' all 'creepy uncle' on us. Trivia *Dr. Venture's "colleague" shares a name with Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. *The dream Dr. Venture has of one goatee-sporting fetus attacked another occurs in several other first-season episodes. These visions lead to a revelation in "Return to Spider-Skull Island," the season finale. *The title of this episode is a play on the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. *The chupacabra (literally 'goat-sucker') is a mythical beast that drinks the blood of livestock. Chupacabras appear in the folklore of Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the southwestern United States. *Dr. Girlfriend can been seen reading Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. Category:The Venture Bros. episodes